Nameless Emotion
by haveyouseenmyhaggis
Summary: One year after his mother's death, Spock reflects.


I look at Jim for a moment and quietly wonder if he knows what day it is today. Is he perhaps, like me, just pretending there is nothing particularly different about today? Or has the thought just not occurred to him? I wonder in silence for I do not want to bring up the subject if he does not wish to speak of it. I am puzzled slightly by the need I feel to tell somebody, however. I wish to share the burden of this knowledge with someone but I do not want to cause upset. Everyone seems to be fine and I do not want to dampen the mood. And so I sit and wonder alone.

I am unsure if today should be as significant as I imagined it to be. Is it just a stereotypical cliché to feel this sadness a year passed the event itself? Today should just be another day, should it not? I should not be feeling so strange. I lock my emotions deep inside me and bury myself in intense work today. I must not focus on the negative points about today.

This morning I looked at the time and realised that exactly a year ago I was perfectly content. Life was normal that morning and I knew nothing of the horror that would come to pass. When I glanced at my watch at half past four in the afternoon, I realised it would have happened by now. Nearly precisely a year ago, my world jolted into another perspective. There were people that were now no longer in my life… people I would never see again.

The first thing that hit me then was a sort of dull shock. I did not cry. I simply stopped for a moment before throwing myself back into life, trying to make everything normal. When I realised it was a year since mother had died, I felt the same sort of dull shock. Has it really been a year since that day? I feel an odd sort of emptiness that I cannot say is sadness but I cannot claim it is happiness either. It is a long shot from indifference because it is certainly making me feel something. This feeling does not seem to have a name, yet I feel it intensely.

I keep remembering that day now. I remember the emptiness, then the sadness. I remember the moment I snapped and lashed out at Jim Kirk. He provoked me. He spoke words that hit too close to home for me to handle. For just a moment as I recall this moment in vivid clarity, the anger touches me again. But just for a moment. I have learnt to control myself now.

I remember the split second where I felt the need to run during the memorial service. My very nature forbade me from giving into that need but it was still there in my mind. I looked to my father and saw his head bowed solemnly. To me, there is something eternally painful about seeing your parent so despairing, something that moves you deeply. I was unsure how to respond to the suffering of someone so close to me. How could I offer comfort when I myself was desperately seeking closure?

I remember finding something of hers in one of my cupboards. A small ornament she had insisted I kept as a memento – a very human habit. Again, I can feel the strange feeling that came over me as I looked at it. I felt as though I could not breathe. It was as though my body was trying to protect me from sadness but in so doing, I had to go through intense pain. It was definitely pain that I felt.

As I go about my work now, I wonder if I am going to hurt the same way I did then. When somebody asked how I was back then, I simply responded the same way I always do: I said I was fine. To say anything else would be illogical, would it not? To be anything other than that would be showing emotion and that is against what I have learnt. It hurt very much to hold that pain inside me though. Sometimes I just wanted to tell someone. Only myself prevented me from doing so.

I just miss her. With all my heart, I miss her. There are moments when nothing would make me happier than to see her again; my birthday being one of those times. Even when I enlisted in Star Fleet she would always send me a card – a greetings card that was one of those incredibly human traditions that fascinated me. Nothing arrived in the post this year. I did not mind not receiving a gift of some sort – I was never hung up on that. What I missed was just knowing she loved me like I loved her.

I do not know where she is now and that is what scares and upsets me most. Illogical as it may seem, I would be happier if I knew exactly where she was, even if I could not contact her. Some time after her funeral, I visited place where her ashes were scattered and I did not feel anything. I had heard that people often felt some connection to their loved one at memorial grounds. I felt nothing and I was afraid. I am ashamed to admit that fear but I was certainly afraid.

"Hey, Spock? You okay?" Jim asks me just then.

I look up at him from the desk and nod simply. "Yes." And so, once again, I lied. Jim watches me curiously for a moment as though he is unconvinced but he shrugs and goes back to his work. I nearly tell him. But I do not. I probably will not tell anybody. After all, there is little point in giving into weakness. If I can carry on working in this state, then there is no need to take action.

I simply miss my mother.


End file.
